Page 6 of Threads That Bind Us
I make it to the bar at the back of the room just as a group of people in pink leather dresses get up from their stools at thevery end of the bar. I take a seat, and the faded blue velvet is surprisingly comfortable.
There’s only one bartender, and he’s swamped at the other end of the room, so I swivel around and observe the bedlam that is Catalina’s.
The ceilings are tall, and from corner to corner, the walls are filled with music paraphernalia. The popcorn ceiling is painted with huge arcs of color, intersecting and blending through the texture.
There’s no formal dance floor, but between the yellow leather booths and black high top tables, people are jumping and dancing and swaying to whatever beat they can find. The band in the corner, whose banner is unreadable in the dim light, plays with the bass too high and the speakers too loud, and everything melds into one continuous thump of voices and guitars and scraping chairs and drums.
A tap on my shoulder pulls me out of my enamored stupor, and I turn to see the bartender smiling at me. His hair is bleached so blond it's nearly white. Through his right eyebrow are three silver rings, making his bright green eyes practically sing. He’s got a smile like the Cheshire Cat, and I already want to be his best friend.
“How ya doin’ tonight, Baby Red?” The deep Boston accent surprises me, but all I can do is smile wider.
“I’m here to do better,” I reply, fishing my card out of the bottom of my purse and handing it to him with raised eyebrows. “A French 75 on an open tab, if you can.”
Without missing a beat, he leans across the bar, snatches my card out of my hand with his teeth, and turns to one of the registers dotting the back counter. I try not to stare open-mouthed, a giggle caught in my throat. Even though there are tons of people here, no one seems to be annoyed that there’s a bit of a wait for drinks.
“You don’t have someone helping you out?” I ask as he slides my card back to me and grabs a bottle of gin from the case.
“Everyone who comes to Catalina’s knows you wait for your drinks, and you party while you wait.” He drops the bottle onto the counter and flings his arm to point at a sign behind a register. “Get rowdy, get rough, but don’t get rude.” He reads it like a command, which it probably is. I salute him, and his face splits into that grin again.
He mixes my drink, pours it into a champagne flute, and places it in front of me with a flourish. When I go to pick it up, he takes my hand straight out of the air and shakes it.
“I’m Sammy, Baby Red, and it’s wonderful that we’ve met.”
“I’m Gwen, Sammy baby, and it’s already been a delight,” I respond as he lets go of my hand.
I lift the drink to him and he blows me a kiss as I take a sip. Sweet and tart and bursting with bubbles, the drink is lemony and sugary and perfect. Seeing my look of pure bliss, he takes a bow, winks, and skips the other way down the bar to tend to more customers.
Sammy’s energy is infectious, and the good feelings brought on by the bubbles and the smiles make me want to chase happiness as far as it will take me. From the depths of my wildly disorganized bag, I pull out a book I’ve been dying to finish. There is no actual plot, no real structure. I lean my arm against the bar, tucking myself away from anyone who might want to engage in conversation, and sip on my drink as I enter another world.
An hour slips by as I page through my book. My glass stays full, Sammy swinging by now and then to top me off and peek over the top of the pages. But as the words start to blur, and the story winds down to its inevitable happy ending, my chest feels tighter and tighter. These two gorgeous vampire ladies get theirhappily ever after. I want that for me. And it’s not going to happen.
Even four-ish drinks in, I know I’m overreacting. First, Ana is worth it, one million times over. She’s my best friend, and my sister, and sometimes feels like my own kid. She’s my everything. I know I’m going to say yes. The rest of my drink goes down without me really tasting it.
And I also know it’s temporary. Ben’s offer is to sleep with him—gag—not marry him. Eventually he’ll get bored, as he always does, and then I can move on. Try to wash the memory of saying yes to my own mother’s ex off my body. Still, I know I won’t be the same person after, and I’m already grieving the person I am at this moment.
I don’t want to be like Isabelle. For so many years, I hated her for chasing after men with money, men who barely cared about her, while I was desperate for her attention. I never fully understood why she acted like she did, doing ridiculous things to secure the fleeting affection of whoever she was dating. Maybe she was incredibly insecure, or selfish, or just wanted things we never had. But every time one guy dropped her, she would dust herself off and find someone new to prove how desirable she was, showing her with gifts and trips.
At least this is different in one way. I’m not abandoning my personal sense of morals for attention and affection. I’m doing it for Ana.
My mind is racing again, and the music and booze are no longer beating the anxiety into submission. I want to take off my shoes and run through a forest until my body hurts so much I can’t think about anything but the pain. I want to drink myself to sleep at this bar.
Instead, I do something far worse.
I make a pros and cons list.
I find a pen tucked into a pocket of my bag and turn to thelast page of my book, drawing a line down the center, marring the page forever. Annotating is one thing, but this is blasphemy. I probably could have asked for a bar napkin. Or grabbed one of the four notebooks also available in my bag. Too late now.
My fingers fumble for my drink until I realize the glass is empty, but I don’t look up. I scribbleproson the left side of the line andconson the right, underlining them with the heavy ink. Okay. I can do this.
The first one on the pros side is easy.
Ana Lives.
That’s the ballgame, really. But I feel like I’ll get some sort of catharsis out of going through the rest of this exercise. So I start on the cons side.
Fucking Ben.
Helping a man cheat.